A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

So in order to prove their absolute impartiality, and to mark at the same time their sense of what was due to an ex-officer of His Majesty's forces they inflicted a fine of five pounds and costs, or a month's imprisonment.

Rufus was disposed at first not to pay the money. He was so angry that he almost felt that the seclusion of a prison cell would be a relief. But better thoughts prevailed. He was absolutely helpless. It was no use kicking or protesting. He could only grin, and abide, and hope that the day would come when justice would find her own.

It was a humiliating day for him. He left the court branded as a drunkard and a brawler. The case for the prosecution had been so clear and circumstantial that even his best friends were confounded. That he should deny the accusation was natural enough; but there was an unspoken fear in their hearts that worry had driven him to drink, and that alcohol acting upon a highly-strung temperament had thrown him momentarily off his mental and moral balance.

Madeline Grover was almost dumbfounded. Unconsciously she had been idealising Rufus for months past, while their last conversation had further exalted him in her estimation. Here was a man, honest in his doubts, sincere in his beliefs, and faithful to all his ideals. A man who "would not make his judgment blind," and who refused to play the hypocrite whatever the world might say in disparagement of him.

Among all her acquaintances there was no man who had struck her fancy so much. He stood apart from the common ruck. His very antagonism to the religious conventions of his time had something of nobleness in it. If he derided the Church it was because he believed it had departed from the spirit and teachings of its founder. His reverence for what was good and helpful had won her admiration.

And now suddenly it had been discovered to her that her idol had not only feet of clay, but was clay altogether, that he was a worse hypocrite than the hypocrites he derided. That behind all his pretence——

She stopped short at that. He had made no pretence. If he had talked about himself it was in disparagement rather than praise. He claimed no virtues beyond what his fellows possessed. He had always been singularly modest in his estimate of his own abilities.

Yet here were the facts in black and white. The unshaken testimony of unimpeachable witnesses, while poor Gervase's face bore unmistakable evidence of the fierceness of the onslaught.

Four days after the trial the local paper came out with a verbatim report. Madeline took a copy to her own room, and spent the whole afternoon in studying its pros and cons.

The points that fastened themselves upon her memory most tenaciously were first, Rufus's refusal to give the name of someone about whom they quarrelled, and second, his suggestion that Timothy Polgarrow had been bribed by Gervase to give false evidence.